Friday thought: Who wants to be an astronaut?

When I was a kid, and certainly when my parents were kids, if you asked a group of 5th graders who wants to be an astronaut quite a few hands would go up.

If you ask a group of kids the same question today, very few hands go up. I know, I've tried it several times.

Why is that?

Why do we fail to inspire kids to explore the universe?

Don’t go saying that it’s some sort of failure of the space industry. It's not "the job" of the space industry to inspire. Inspiration from exploration comes organically through observing actual progress.

Most kids, when given the chance to really stop and have time to ponder are drawn to exploration. You know, when allowed to actually BE kids.

What we need are more stories they can connect with. Stories of ordinary people doing great things.

New design

We've moved to squarespace so we can concentrate on writing and publishing awesome content instead of spending a lot of time mucking with servers. The podcast feed is being moved and will be back up in a day or two.